OAKLAND — Paradiso. The Italian word for paradise evokes bliss, delight, felicity and any number of bars sharing the title of the third part of Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”

Paradiso also happens to be the moniker of a newly opened downtown Oakland lounge named for a district of Asmara — the capital city of Eritrea, where the owners are from.

“It’s a fun, social place to kick it and mingle, similar to the Uptown District,” co-owner Mesfin Semere said. He meant the neighborhood in Asmara as well as the new lounge, which is written Para Diso and aimed at attracting what he called the “melting pot” of Oakland’s up-and-coming classy professional people.

The Web site describes Para Diso lounge as “the new upscale and urban hangout providing you with two full bars, two dance floors complete with soundproof walls “… and two big-screen TVs, making it a perfect space to relax and watch the game after a long day’s work, mingling, or kicking off your shoes and dancing to the beats of the spinning DJ.”

But they let me in, and I don’t have a beautiful, classy or “up-and-coming” stamp on my ID card, although they might actually change the rule about shoes if I tried to kick off mine.

Para Diso’s predecessor was pickier. Vibe accepted (in the spiritual sense) only gay, lesbian or African-American patrons. That’s fine by me (I just can’t do anything about not being gay, lesbian or black), but the selection process evidently limited business.

Vibe closed during the summer, and Semere, 30, and co-owner Yonatan Hagos, 37, took over in September. The grand opening isn’t for another couple of weeks, though the lounge has been operating on weekends on a limited basis.

Para Diso definitely was open Dec. 4 for the First Friday gallery crawl. Semere and Hagos had installed a ska/punk/’80s hip-hop band to celebrate approval of their cabaret license and to draw in the crowds clustered around Telegraph Avenue and 23rd Street. The second-floor bar-dance floor combo was empty, but the lounge downstairs was covered in people.

Not only do I not have a “classy” ID card, but I didn’t even know the place was in operation. The cabaret permit hearing was Dec. 3, and often more than just weeks pass before a club finally opens. I ended up there because my boyfriend had found his way to the bar and a squat bottle of Red Stripe beer.

Hagos and Semere said they always had talked about opening a club in Oakland, but the pace with which it happened — right in the middle of the recession — surprised even them. It was the right place at a right enough time, so to speak.

“The opportunity came, and we jumped on it,” Hagos said. “Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet.”

The old friends bit off a mouthful, investing thousands to spruce up the lounge and add little touches, like the backlit liquor shelves behind the bar.

Semere nevertheless nearly swaggers with confidence about the success he anticipates for Para Diso. He knows people, as they say, and has a phone list from his 12 years as a Bay Area promoter and bartender.

“I’m a social animal. I like to go out,” he said. Better everyone gather at Para Diso than at his nearby pad, which is where he said friends ended up after hours anyway.

“I would die if you put me in a cubicle,” he said, convincingly.

It also helps that the men are strands in a web of business and family relationships that stretches from Ninth Street to the Temescal district. And they are members of the Ethiopian and Eritrean expat community in Oakland, one of the largest in the United States.

Semere left Asmara 12 years ago to avoid military service out of a preference for living peacefully with people from Ethiopia instead of helping to prolong simmering tensions between the two East African neighbors. Here he began his career as a bartender and promoter after meeting D’Wayne Wiggins at the singer’s Java House cafe near Lake Merritt.

Hagos left Eritrea at age 11 for Los Angeles and came to the Bay Area in 1991 to study economics at UC Berkeley. These days he works as a software product manager.

By night, he and Semere are providing a much-needed density to downtown and helping to push the boundaries of the entertainment district farther and farther south from the epicenter near the Fox Theater.

“It’s just sort of a natural progress as Oakland matures and politicians see the value of business and restaurants that actually attract younger people,” Hagos said. If managed properly, the success in one sector can translate into overall prosperity for Oakland, he added.

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